Rudy Ceja is raising his daughters, Ruby, left, age 11, and Haley, center, age 10, as a single parent battling unemployment with help from Family Promise. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram

Rudy Ceja is raising his daughters, Ruby, left, age 11, and Haley, center, age 10, as a single parent battling unemployment with help from Family Promise. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram

Photo: James Durbin

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Rudy Ceja poses for a photo with his two daughters, Ruby, left, age 11, and Haley, right, age 10, Thursday at the Family Promise day center. Rudy Ceja is raising his daughters as a single parent battling unemployment with help from Family Promise. James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram less

Rudy Ceja poses for a photo with his two daughters, Ruby, left, age 11, and Haley, right, age 10, Thursday at the Family Promise day center. Rudy Ceja is raising his daughters as a single parent battling ... more

Photo: James Durbin

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Midland’s unemployed often defies stereotype

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Donna Reick is turning 60 later this year but for the first time in her life, she was forced to get a roommate.

The long-time Midlander lost her job of 23 years in October 2012 when her bosses told her “this is no longer working,” she said.

Since that day, Reick has been a member of Midland’s population that is unemployed, which once again ranks lowest among every other U.S. metropolitan area at 2.7 percent.

Before she lost her job, Reick said she was earning about $70,000 a year, plus health and dental benefits and a cushy retirement plan. And adjusting to an income of about $1,800 a month was not easy, she said.

“I’ve had to get rid of a lot of things and I have to give up more,” Reick said.

Aside from giving up a room in her home to collect money to help pay for a portion of her mortgage and other bills, Reick said she also had to trade in her “fully loaded” Nissan Maxima for a Nissan Sentra “which has nothing,” she said.

“My savings account is gone and I lost my nice car,” Reick said. “Now, I’m just trying not to lose my home.”

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates Midland boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the country, about 2,600 people are still without a job, according to data released by the agency last week.

Tom Miller, executive director of Family Promise of Midland, said he has noticed that many Midlanders have the perception that unemployed people around the city must be lazy because if they really wanted a job, they could get one.

Miller heads up the local branch of a nonprofit organization that is designed to help the homeless. He said there is a part of the population -- in addition to the homeless -- that struggles to either find work or keep a job and it’s often not because they’re “lazy.”

“You can become employed but there’s other issues with that as well,” Miller said.

The cost of day care, for example, can prohibit some parents from being able to keep a job because they can’t afford to pay someone to watch their children, he said.

Rudy Ceja, 37, moved from Los Angeles to Midland about three years ago with his two daughters -- Ruby, 11, and Haley, 10 -- after he was told about the vast employment opportunities found around the area.

After completing the 23-hour drive from California to West Texas, Ceja said he was able to find a job delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut just two days after arriving in Midland.

But the gig only lasted about 3.5 months before Ceja was forced to quit.

“I didn’t have a baby-sitter and they didn’t pay enough to hire a baby-sitter,” he said.

At first, Ceja said he was able to bring his daughters to work with him, but it became increasingly difficult to give his full attention to his work while still looking after the girls.

The struggle grew once summer hit because the girls no longer spent the weekdays in school, so Ceja had to watch them all day, while still needing to work.

“At first we would have fun and go outside but when we started to do that everyday, it got boring,” Ruby said, adding that she would have rather spent time at the park playing tag than sitting at the pizza restaurant.

So Ceja quit his job and relied on government assistance and side jobs, like mowing lawns, to support himself and his daughters.

Miller said it’s common for parents -- especially single parents -- to become unemployed during summer months because they often can’t afford child care while school is not in session.

Data from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission show there was a spike in the number of Midland recipients of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program -- or food stamps -- during the last two summers.

Last year, 1.6 percent more Midlanders were SNAP recipients during May through August compared to the other eight months. In 2012, there was a 2.4 percent spike during the summer months, the data show.

Ceja stayed on the same routine of working different jobs within the food industry throughout the school year and filing for government assistance during the summer.

“All [the SNAP employees] know me,” he said. “They know my routine.”

But Ceja said he won’t have to quit his job at Chick-fil-A once Ruby and Haley are out of school because he is now a part of Family Promise of Midland, which provides child care.

Kay Hathcox, 67, is another unemployed Midlander. She lost her job in November 2011 when the company she worked for relocated its offices to the Dallas area.

She faces a different problem than Ceja. Because she is a part of Midland’s older generation, most businesses think she isn’t capable of performing quality work, Hathcox said.

“I can do various things,” she said. “You give me a chance, you show me how to do it and I can learn. I still have the ability to work.”

Hathcox is now participating in a program through a nonprofit called Experience Works that allows her to work temporarily part-time and acquire new skills that are intended to help her and other participants become more attractive to employers.

In her experience, Hathcox said she has found that her resume, which lists multiple jobs with multiple years of experience at each, harms her in her job search because it shows how old she is.

“If you said you had 10 years of experience, they snatched you up,” she said, recalling how the job market used to be.

But that’s no longer the case, Hathcox said.

“Most places want the young, attractive go-getter -- the ones who were born with a cellphone in their ear,” she said.

Permian Basin Workforce Development Board CEO Willie Taylor echoed Miller’s statements and said the perception that anyone can find work in Midland is an old cliché, adding that individual people have specific issues that may hinder them from finding employment as easily as the majority of the population.

Reick, after starting to sob about how distraught her job search has made her, said she finally started a new job on Monday with a local oil company.

Although, the position is through a “temp-to-hire” program run by a third-party agency. And if the job doesn’t work out, it wouldn’t be the first time, Reick said.

The 59-year-old said she can only hope this company hires her after the 90-day “temp phase,” noting that it hasn’t worked out with other firms in the past because she “did not fit in” and businesses always have the right to lay people off.

“It’s stressful enough to have a brand new job with software you’ve never used before,” Reick said. “I just pray that I get to keep this job.”